A world in which relationships are changed by instant messaging, emoticons and social networks, where language is shaped into a slang that is half dialect and half imitation English, while the imagination is standardized by logos and slogans. So ferociously real that it becomes surreal, onirical. A world without fables. “Grimmless”: a merry-goround that turns into a brawl, Snow White who aims at something more than any old Prince Charming and Cinderella’s castle out-classed by Barbie’s new mansion. The duo ricci/forte – who have stunned audiences throughout Italy with their productions – return with a zapping that rips to shreds so many stereotypes of contemporary society, in a poisonous post-documentary in which human behaviour is reflected and refracted by the oldest short-circuit in the world, the one between fable and reality.

Stefano Ricci and Gianni Forte met at the Teatro Stabile in Palermo at the end of the Nineties: as actors newly graduated from the Silvio d’Amico with a passion for writing, they did not recognize themselves in the experiences they had accumulated to that point. They moved to New York, where they studied playwriting with Edward Albee. They abandoned the practice of acting to dedicate their work to experimental writing, and in 2007 founded the company that carries their name. They write all kinds of things: for the theatre, as well as film and television – and perhaps it is this experience that gives the duo the capacity to address the mixed blessings of contemporary post-capitalist imagination with such force and originality.